It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
Moby Dick (1851)
Call me Ishmael.
Moby Dick (1851)
August 12, 1973 I saw Orlando Cepeda go 5 for 5 in a Red Sox rout of the California Angels in Fenway Park. I was 15 and dad took me to the game while we (mom, dad, Robin and me) were on our way to my only trip to Ireland. I remember the game, but not that it was just dad and me that went. But that's what it says in mom's scrapbook from the trip (attached). Dad liked sports OK, but I'm sure attending this game was a gesture to me.
I was a huge Orioles fan at that time, and not a fan of the then new designated hitter rule which was just introduced that spring. But Cepeda couldn't field any longer. The man could barely walk. He could still hit, though. That day he had a home run, a double, two of his singles bounced off the famous Fenway left field wall and he scored 4 of Boston's 14 runs. Fenway is part pool table sometimes.
I was in total awe of Cepeda.
The next two weeks while we were in Ireland I hardly could find a baseball score, which was OK because the Orioles were only doing so-so at the time. The first headline I saw when we returned to the US told me the Orioles had won 16 games in a row while I was away! They won 97 games that season to win the AL East, but lost to the Athletics in the playoffs.
I haven't followed baseball in many years. It's just a big bucks business nowadays. Occasionally I've been known to watch a minor league game, which still seems to me a fine way spend an afternoon or evening. But the majors are just crazy expensive, to watch boys play a game. We had great seats in 1973 for $3. Correcting for inflation, that should be maybe $18 today, not whatever it does cost.
Thank you Mr. Cepeda.
https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/august-12-1973-veteran-dhs-orlando-cepe…
I do feel sometimes I'm just entertaining myself while staving off the inevitable. Don't you?
No.
Sure you do.
You, Colm, you know what you used to be?
No Pádraic what did I used to be?
Nice! You used to be nice! And now, do you know what you are? Not nice.
I suppose niceness doesn't last then does it Pádraic. But I'll tell you something that does last.
What? And don't say something stupid lIke music.
Music lasts.
I knew it!
And paintings last. And poetry lasts.
So does niceness.
Do you know who they'll remember for how nice he was in the seventeenth century?
Who?
Absolutely no one. Yet we all remember the music of the time. Everyone to a man knows Mozart's name.
Well I don't so there goes that theory.
If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else.
I reject your reality and substitute my own
Made famous by Adam Savage of Mythbuster, who borrowed it from The Dungeonmaster (1984). A similar line appears in an even earlier Doctor Who episode
Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.
Borrowed and repeated (with permission) by Adam Savage on Mythbusters circa 2015
The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.
Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little - that's how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.
